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Fillets of Whitings

Fried fillets of whiting coated in breadcrumbs and flour, served with butter or veal gravy, cayenne, lemon, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Fillets of Whitings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Clean and wash the whiting fish thoroughly, but do not skin them.

  2. Remove the flesh from both sides close to the bones, from tail to head.

  3. Divide each side into two fillets and trim them into good shape.

  4. Fold the fillets in a cloth to absorb moisture.

Coat and fry

  1. Dip the fillets in the beaten egg, then coat them in a mixture of breadcrumbs and flour.

  2. Fry the fillets in lard or clarified butter until golden brown, about 5 minutes.

  3. Drain the fillets on white blotting paper and arrange them in a circle on a plate.

Serve

  1. Serve with melted butter or thickened veal gravy seasoned with cayenne, lemon juice, and chopped parsley.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Whiting fish
Provides the delicate white flesh that is the main component of the dish.
Beaten egg
Binds the breadcrumb coating so it adheres to the fillets during frying.
Fine breadcrumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating when fried.
All-purpose flour
Dries the fish surface and helps the coating brown evenly.
Melted butter
Adds richness and flavour to the serving sauce.

The step that matters

Drying the fillets before coating. Folding the fillets in a cloth removes surface moisture. Wet fish steams in the hot fat and makes the breadcrumb coating soggy and likely to slip off, so the fillets should be dry before dipping in egg.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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